The growing use of electronics has led to an increase use of microprocessors and firmware in almost every appliance. For example, appliances including refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers and etc. may be controlled using a microprocessor and a firmware integrated therein.
An increase in growth and in use of microprocessors has increased the need to reconfigure appliances supported by microprocessors. In general, to reconfigure appliances, a technician's physical access to the actual appliance is needed. Not only accessing the appliance is inconvenient for the owner by requiring the individual to be at home during the service call, but it is inconvenient for the technician since in many cases the electronic device may be heavy and hard to move in order to get access to a port for reconfiguring the electronic device.
One conventional method is to reconfigure appliances using the Internet. Unfortunately many appliances are not equipped with Internet connection in order for their microprocessors or memory to be reconfigured. Moreover, even if an appliance is equipped to be Internet operable, it is in general difficult to provide an Internet connection using conventional communication lines (e.g., through digital subscriber line (DSL), Cable, Satellite and etc.) to every appliance in a residential home since the Internet connection is generally not available throughout a residence. As such, appliances residing in the room with the Internet connection are the only appliances that can be reconfigured in this fashion.
One conventional method provides reconfiguration for the appliance by communicating over a power line. In general, power transmission requires transformers for transferring power over the power line. However, transformers behave as a low pass filter, thereby filtering out high frequency data. In one conventional method, data is being aggregated at a medium voltage or low voltage point with power transmission. However, to avoid being filtered out, prior to arrival at a transformer, data is being extracted and once again aggregated after power itself is sent through transformers.
Unfortunately, extracting and aggregating data at each transformer is very inefficient. Moreover, aggregating data requires an alternative connection to the data provider, e.g., through a DSL line, Cable and etc. for providing data for transmission and aggregation. Furthermore, power lines are in general not capable of providing high speed data transmission and they are susceptible to interference. As a result, while data transmission for a small amount of data may be sufficient, this type of transmission are not suitable for updating and patching software programs on a television and a set-top-box since software programs for more sophisticated electronic devices tend to be quite large in size.
Accordingly, providing data through power lines may only be suitable for providing reconfigurable appliance control supported by simple appliances (e.g., dishwasher, washer/dryer and etc.). Additionally, federal regulations have limited the strength of the data signal that can be injected onto power lines, thereby providing additional constraint on the communication system.
Another conventional method may reconfigure appliances by communicating to a controller via an Internet using conventional connections (e.g., DSL, Cable and etc.) and using a power line communication to supply the reconfiguration to the appliance thereafter. However, this conventional method is merely for controlling appliances and requires connection via an Internet using conventional communication channels (e.g., DSL, Cable and etc.). Unfortunately, many residential homes do not have access to the Internet using conventional communication channels. For example, this method would be extremely problematic and inconvenient in developing countries and third world countries.
In general, sophisticated electronics such as televisions and set-top-boxes, to name a few, need complicated programming software. Most electronics have short cycle designs, which translate to short testing time. As a result, electronic devices are often shipped to customers even though their programming software contains programming bugs. Unfortunately, it is difficult to update software programs used by highly sophisticated electronic devices since most of these devices are unable to be updated through the Internet using conventional methods (e.g., DSL, Cable and etc.) for the reasons discussed above. Moreover, it is difficult to update software programs used by highly sophisticated electronics through a power line transmission since the software programs are in general large in size and the power line transmission is slow for transmitting large amount of data.